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  In this article, I shall be showing you how to grow your startup with adaptive selling. To start with, adaptive selling is a well-researched, behaviour-based approach to sales that balances personalization with efficiency. On the other side of the spectrum is rigid selling. Rigid selling is when a startup operates its sales process like a script. It is like one of those generic sales emails we receive in our emails and LinkedIn.
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The scope of rigid selling is that single sales copies are written for the general population. When copies look and sound too generic, people will begin to feel like numbers rather than humans. Conversely, adaptive selling is more like crafting sales copy that meets the specific needs of specific people. You can call this type of selling personalized selling. In this article, I shall discuss tips for adaptive selling.

  • Sell Through Insights

Leading startups understand their customer’s buying behaviour and use them to engage in adaptive selling. They get this data through various formats, such as running an opinion poll on social media, sharing Google forms to get customers’ data or using Survey Monkey and so on. With consumers’ data, you can understand their biases and psychological, economical and motivational conditions. With this, you can reach out to customers on a personal level. 

  • Influence Consumers’ Perceptions

It is popularly believed that customers are always right, but Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs disagrees and he has his points. Most often, it is not always healthy to be influenced by consumers. They are cases where consumers hate change even when there is a better alternative.
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They just want to keep doing things the old way. If you stick with consumers’ opinions all the time, you might lose an opportunity to introduce something better. How do you manoeuvre this situation? You just have to influence the way they see things. This is why being a thought leader in your niche is very important. Let’s take for instance, globally, humans are used to powering their vehicles with fuel and gas. However, Elon Musk has changed the perception of the world by introducing electric cars. Before the large-scale launch, there has been so much buzz about electric cars. So for the business founder, influencing your audience through thought-leadership is a way of creating a soft landing before reaching out to sell to customers. This is the hallmark of adaptive selling – shaping their behaviour.

  • Get the Sales Department To Adapt

Creating a startup that engages in adaptive selling is all about getting your sales team to understand various customers and their behaviours.
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It is important to segment your customers according to their behaviour. For instance, you can segment customers according to generations – Gen Z, Millennia, Baby Boomers and so on. By defining them into clusters, you can appoint those suited for each generation. For example, if you have a Gen Z on your sales team, it is easier for him to reach out to consumers that fall within that cluster. Older members of the sales team can easily create sales content that older generations can relate to.

Final Words

By introducing adaptive selling you create a chain of communication that is highly personalized. It can also help your in-house sales team to up their communication game as they engage in personalised selling. Adaptive selling naturally increases the chances of winning and sustaining your customers. Customers stick with a brand that understands their needs and meets them. Featured Image Source: Freepik
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This article was first published on 27th September 2022

nnaemeka-emmanuel

Nnaemeka is an academic scholar with a degree in History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is also a creative writer, content creator, storyteller, and social analyst.

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